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Demant hacked. Oticon infrastructure in recovery mode

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A critical “cybercrime” incident brought down the IT system of the multinational hearing technology group, Demant, on Tuesday (September 3).

By Wednesday afternoon (Sept 4), the holding firm behind Oticon was still trying to limit the damage, although President and CEO, Søren Nielsen, claimed in a company announcement that its fast reaction in shutting down systems had enabled the group to “contain” the issue.

“The Group’s IT infrastructure has been hit by cyber-crime, and we have identified the root causes hereof,” said Nielsen.

“In cooperation with our global IT partners, we have initiated a thorough and gradual recovery. We continue to keep several IT systems closed down in order to recover in a safe and structured manner,” continued the Demant announcement. The Denmark-based firm was unable to give an estimate on the impact of the incident or on how long it would continue to affect its operations."

"Cybercrime" collapses Demant's IT infrastructure5

Demant's IT systems collapsed by cybercrime incident

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Edited

Demant A/S: IT infrastructure incident

The Demant Group has experienced a critical incident on our internal IT infrastructure on 3 September 2019.

We have chosen to shut down IT systems across multiple sites and business units.

With utmost urgency, we are working on technical recovery with global IT partners to contain the issue.

In the interim period, we operate the business in the best possible ways. Currently, we have no conclusion on the duration or business impact of the incident.

We have no further comments. We will update when we have significant, additional information.

Further information:
Søren Nielsen, President & CEO
Phone +45 3917 7300
www.demant.com5

https://tools.eurolandir.com/tools/Pressreleases/GetPressRelease/?ID=3640208&lang=en-GB&companycode=dk-wdh&v=redesign9

It makes no sense why someone would do an cyber attack on a hearing aid manufacturer unless its a unhappy hacker using problematic oticon aids. Or maybe it was a ransomware attack which is happening everywhere.

@Terost said:

It makes no sense why someone would do an cyber attack on a hearing aid manufacturer

Criminal vandals rarely make sense. And professional criminals often practice in areas that might be less noticed. Or possibly Oticon’s parent company might have simply lacked adequate security in the foolish belief they would not be targeted.

To be absolutely honest there isn’t a company or government in this world that has a present on the internet that hasn’t been hacked. As an IT professional for over 20 years I have seen a lot of it. It was my job to clean up the mess these hackers did to so many companies, and even governments. There is only, I repeat only one way to prevent hackers, and that is to disconnect all computers, internet phones and devices and lock them in a safe.

I saw in 60 minutes tv report about ransomware. It’s happening everywhere. Some hacker send ransomware to a small town in USA, they wanted 60g, the city manager told them that we are a small town and got the monetary demand down to 8g. Yes its all about money and easier than robbing banks. To stop ransomware, all forms of bitcoins have to be banned, strict controls on digital currency.

I watched that too. Was good. Here’s a preview of sorts:

Never open email, or email attachments without absolutely knowing the person sending it to you, that means verification of the email addresses, because hacks hack your friends list, and contacts. Never allow automatic pop ups from websites or emails. Change passwords often and never use the same passwords for more than one account.
Always use VPNs when connected to the internet. Never use open WIFI.

In reply to @AbramBaileyAuD

I get phishing emails with Apple, Bank logos etc and I have forwarded these phishing messages to the company’s security dept. Here’s one from Apple:
If you receive what you believe to be a phishing email that’s designed to look like it’s from Apple, please send it to reportphishing@apple.com.

Correct cvkemp. I do all these security precautions.

Hackers and spammers love using emails that look like official company business. I was a Microsoft email server professional and was always having to look at emails to make sure they were really send on the servers that it looked like it was from. Hackers can slip emails in to the servers and almost make it look like it came from that server and only someone that really reads between the lines will catch the truth.

In reply to @cvkemp

We had to have a company-wide training video sent out on this because several people were clicking to open emails ‘from our company VP’ and getting everything hacked. I always make sure the email of the person it says it is, is actually the email it’s coming from. I never imagined someone would want to hack into a furniture retailer’s email system but there ya have it.

In reply to @cvkemp

@cvkemp said:

that means verification of the email addresses,

According to an IT guy at a university that I worked for once upon a time, just looking at the purported e-mail address isn’t good enough. The guy, in working on my university computer, remarked that it’s possible to spoof e-mail addresses because of lack of security in the protocol. This was probably about 20 years ago and involved POP3 e-mails/servers - so maybe things have improved since then? And are better with different protocols like IMAP?

EDIT_UPDATE: Email spoofing - Wikipedia

In reply to @Terost

So you want to ban cryptocoins when only a fraction of them are used for ransomware.

Let’s apply that logic to other things:

To stop drug deals, all forms of cash have to be banned, even though only a fraction of cash is used for drug deals.

To stop people from being stabbed, ban all knives, even though only a fraction of knives are used for stabbing.

Let’s ban cars and airplanes while we’re at it.

And so on…

More and more hackers, criminals and illegal companies are using digital currency like bitcoins because the transaction can’t be traced. More gun controls won’t work either. We just need the background checks to include mental health records. To reduce mass shootings, we need more trained citizens with guns. The issue is that police can’t tell whom is the person with the gun the shooter or the armed citizen that shot the shooter at the time the police arrives.

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